Could pepper pose a problem for Vietnamese coffee?

We looked at the Vietnamese coffee industry a couple of days ago, specifically at the disparate link between the country’s export numbers and export revenue. Vo Thanh Do, a senior government official, suggested that the reasons were wide-ranging and encompassed everything from the reliance on obsolete technologies through to the use consistently poor business strategies.

But with prices not really picking up, plantation owners are now turning their attention to other crops and are slowly beginning to shun coffee.

Is this the start of a worrying trend for the world’s largest producer of robusta?